Despite the relentless increases in D.C. rents and real estate prices over the last few decades, rent control has made it possible some of the city’s low-income residents to hold on to their housing even as many of their neighbors have decamped for cheaper digs in the suburbs.

Because many Latinos are not eligible for or choose not to use government housing assistance, the District’s strong rent-control laws have played an important role in the lives of some of the city’s most vulnerable Latino tenants.

There are more than 80,000 rent-controlled apartments and houses in the District —The Urban Institute

The city has nearly 80,000 houses and apartment units in more than 5,000 buildings covered by rent control, according to an Urban Institute report. However, some experts say the number of units has likely fallen in recent years as more landlords have found ways around rent control in order to capitalize on the influx of wealthier people willing to pay more to live in neighborhoods that were once the hub of the Latino community.

According to D.C.’s Rental Housing Act of 1985, landlords may only raise rent by 2 percent a year plus inflation, determined by the Consumer Price Index for Washington D.C. Elderly residents over the age of 62, pay only CPI increases from one year to the next.

TOPA

The Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), meanwhile, gives tenants of rent controlled buildings first refusal rights to purchase their homes when the buildings go up for sale. Landlords must notify the residents and give them time to make an offer. Buildings with five or more apartments must form a tenants’ association first.

Despite what tenant advocates say is one of the country’s strongest rent control laws, landlords have become adept in workarounds since rent control was enacted in the 1970s.

“Landlords want to clear buildings to increase rent,” says LEDC’s regional tenant and outreach specialist Phil Kennedy. “They can’t increase rent on current tenants, so they try to get them out. One of the strategies for doing that is delaying repairs, occasional landlord harassment, and illegal evictions.”

In the most extreme cases, tenants in rent-controlled buildings have been stuck living with leaky roofs, rats, cockroaches, mold and other human health hazards. But despite gruesome conditions, their options are limited by the shortage of affordable housing in the city, says Kennedy and other advocates.

According to Michael Garcia, tenant and outreach specialist at the Central American Resource Center (Carecen), one of the biggest problems is the misuse of one particular part of the city’s rent control framework: the voluntary agreement, or V.A. The V.A. was first conceived to allow for temporary rent increases in certain circumstances, for example, to pay off the cost of new washers and dryers installed in units. Landlords, however, have used it to remove housing from rent control altogether by making rent increases permanent.

“Voluntary Agreements started off as a good thing, and now it’s being used to eliminate rent controlled buildings and raise rent on people who decide to stay there and cannot afford it,” Garcia says. “They go from paying rent controlled prices to market prices.”

 

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—Rebecca Toro